


i want to know what love is

by owilde



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Coming Out, Developing Relationship, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Romance, Therapy, Toxic Parental Figures, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000, coping with loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 19:04:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14171490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owilde/pseuds/owilde
Summary: It's been a year since Jason's death. Cheryl's trying her best to save money, to get out of her oppressing house and mother, like they had planned with Jason.That's when she's made to share all her shifts down at the café with Toni Topaz.





	i want to know what love is

**Author's Note:**

> so the thing is, I haven't seen a single episode since season one, which I never even finished, _but_ I saw that these two were developing something and, well. I fell in love. So when I say that this is an AU, that is very much true. Cliff in particular is mostly just like an OC, haha
> 
>  
> 
> _anyway_
> 
>  
> 
> title taken from Foreigner's "I Want To Know What Love Is", please point out any glaring errors, et cetera

It wasn’t that Cheryl was competitive, or anything like that – although there were certainly people who would argue against that. She didn’t _have_ to win, or be the best. She didn’t really want to, but after being conditioned into it from birth, well. She couldn’t help it, sometimes. Things got into her head, screwed with her mind.

So, it wasn’t that she had to be the worker of the month. She didn’t need to satisfaction of having her picture up on the café wall, knowing that she had worked hard for it. But it seemed to Cheryl that it was a very self-evident fact that she was, by default, the best that the Vixen Venders had ever had or ever would.

She should’ve been worker of the month every month, all year round. It was how things were around here.

Yet, the picture up on the wall right now did not say _Cheryl Blossom – Worker of The Month, April._ Nor did it sport her picture, the one she’d matched her eye shadow and shirt for, and which had then turned out to be black and white, so it hadn’t really mattered at all.

No, this month’s best worker was someone else. Cheryl frowned at the picture, her arms crossed. Toni Topaz was someone Cheryl wanted nothing to do with, if possible. She was smirking in her picture, but not in the endearing way some people smirked. Toni looked smug, arrogant. _Look at me_ , her crinkled eyes seemed to say. _I took your position. I’m the best worker_.

“Not for long,” Cheryl mumbled.

“Sorry?”

Cheryl twirled around, a ready-made smile plastered on her face. It fell flat when she noticed who it was that was standing in front of her. “Toni Topaz,” she pronounced, tilting her head. “What a pleasant surprise to ruin my morning on this fine Sunday.”

Toni rolled her eyes. She was pulling her hair up into a careless ponytail – some wisps escaped, and she tucked them behind her ears. “Don’t start, alright?” She asked. “I’m not any happier about sharing all shifts this month than you are.”

Cheryl opened her mouth, affronted, then closed it. “I’m a delight to work with,” she argued.

“Uh-huh.” Toni turned away from her to assort their tea collection. Her nails had been painted green, which Cheryl didn’t think fit very well with her hair, but it wasn’t like Toni was any kind of epitome of fashion sense, anyway. “Sure you are, when you’re not bitching about every single thing under the sun.” She paused, and put her finger on her chin in an impression of someone thinking something over. “Oh, but right. That’s never.”

Cheryl’s lips pulled into a frown. “It’s not like you’re any better, Miss Scholarship.”

Toni huffed in something like amusement. Her eyes never left the jars of tea leave mixes. “Yeah, I’m on scholarship. That’s such an original insult, Blossom. How about we focus on working, instead?”

They never shared shifts. It was one thing Cheryl was grateful to her boss for. She may have been a thorn in her side most of the time, but she understood interpersonal relationships, and that some people just didn’t work together. Cheryl and Toni were those people.

Toni had transferred to the same college as Cheryl half a year ago. Suffice to say, they hadn’t hit it off. Toni was majoring in social studies, or arts, some other useless degree like that. Cheryl had no clue how she’d gotten a scholarship, when word was she’d skipped most of high school after joining a gang, but she’d gotten it nevertheless.

They shared one class, much to their shared annoyance. And fine, Cheryl could admit it – Toni seemed smart. She did her homework, and aced her exams. She’d made fast acquaintances in Riverdale, and had no shortage of friends it seemed – people kept telling Cheryl how wonderful she was, how clever, how kind.

Cheryl wasn’t jealous. She just didn’t understand herself, or Toni, or them together. That was all.

She didn’t know what had possessed their boss to even consider putting them on the same shift, much less for an entire month, but here they were.

“Don’t enjoy your high horse for too long,” Cheryl said, shooting the Worker of The Month picture one last fleeting look. “May’s all mine.”

Toni hummed. “I don’t think so,” she said. “After all, I’m…” She trailed off, her eyes flickering between Earl Grey and House Mix. “Actually, never mind. Can you go check on the bagels?”

Cheryl frowned at her, but let it go.

As far as first days went, theirs wasn’t terrible. The café was conveniently located right outside the Riverdale College, so the flow of clientele was pretty much constant. Toni kept herself busy making drinks, whilst Cheryl switched between baking and selling pastries. They didn’t talk much, which was all well and good – the less Cheryl had to hear of Toni, the better.

They closed at eight. Toni waved the last customer out the door with a blinding, egregious smile. As the door closed behind them, she turned to Cheryl. Her hair had become a mess, with the ponytail barely clinging on.

“I can clean up here, if you have somewhere to be,” she said, still smiling a little. She eyed Cheryl, as if searching her face for something. “You look a little tired.”

“I’m not…” Cheryl realized halfway through the sentence that she didn’t want to argue, not really. What was the point, anyway? If she denied Toni’s assumptions, she’d have to tolerate her presence for even longer. “Fine. It’s been a long day, having to deal with you.”

Toni looked amused. “I’m sure,” she said. “The feeling is entirely mutual, don’t worry.”

Cheryl left her alone behind the counter, and if her chest felt oddly tight, well. It had nothing to do with Toni, nothing at all.

She hung her apron up on the break room coat rack. As Cheryl let the black fabric slip from her fingers, she felt her shoulders tense up on reflex. Her body was preparing itself for going back home already. Cheryl swallowed, staring at the logo on the apron with dull eyes. Would it always be like this? It had been, for as long as she could remember.

Cheryl grabbed her bag and stormed out through the backdoors, already sick of this day.

 

The lights were off inside, which meant that no one was in the kitchen nor in the living room. Cheryl breathed a sigh of relief as she opened the front door and slipped inside, careful not to make too much noise. Her mother had the tendency to complain about that. But then, she had the tendency to complain about everything and anything Cheryl did or didn’t do.

She made it through the first set of stairs, before her mother’s voice stopped her in her tracks.

“Cheryl?” Penelope asked. Her voice carried out from her bedroom – she and Cliff now had separate ones. Not that anyone in town knew about it. That was how the Blossoms worked. “Come over, would you.”

It wasn’t a question, and Cheryl didn’t treat it as such. She shuffled over to the bedroom door and stood by the frame, trying a smile on. “Hey, mother. What is it?”

Penelope was lying in bed under her too expensive covers, propped up on pillows. She’d been reading a book, which now laid upside down against her chest. Some old romance novel, from a quick glance. Cheryl wondered if her mother missed being in love. Then she wondered if she’d ever even experienced that.

Penelope fixed her cold eyes on Cheryl. Her lips curled into an equally insincere smile. “How was work?”

“Fine,” Cheryl said, before remembering herself. “It went good, mother. I think we had a record amount of customers today.”

“That’s good,” Penelope said. Cheryl’s words seemed to not have registered at all. She sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t exhaust yourself by working so hard, when it’s not a necessity at all.”

 _It is_ , Cheryl thought. _It really is_. But her mother didn’t know what she was saving money for, and wouldn’t until it’d be too late. “It gives me something to do,” she said, repeating her age-old excuse like a familiar fairy tale. “You know how school isn’t—”

“Yes, we’re all aware you’re something a prodigy in your own mind,” Penelope drawled. “Remember, it wasn’t your brains that got you into that college. But you know that, don’t you.”

Cheryl forced her smile on. “Of course,” she agreed. “You do so much for me, mother. I’m so grateful.”

“I hope so.” Penelope eyed her over once more, before picking up her book. “Good night, Cheryl.”

Cheryl’s smile wavered and disappeared as Penelope’s eyes focused on the pages rather than her. “Good night, mother,” she managed.

It took a lot, like it always did, to not run back into her room.

 

Unable to sleep, Cheryl found herself staring at her phone screen in the dark. Her home screen picture, her one act of defiance, was a picture of some model she’d found on Pinterest. It wasn’t even that courageous – her go-to excuse, should her mother question it, was to say it was fashion purposes. Finding an example in other women.

Right.

Cheryl eyed the message button on the bottom row of her screen for a minute, before clicking her screen shut.

This time, she fell asleep before she could overthink herself into crying.

 

*

 

“Have some toast,” Penelope said, not offering the plate across the table.

Cheryl cut her omelette into smaller pieces meticulously, eyes not leaving her plate. The TV was playing on softly somewhere in the background – probably Cliff watching the morning news, like he always did. Despite this, he seemed to be the most clueless member of the Blossom household by a mile.

“No, thank you,” Cheryl said. She poured herself orange juice, still avoiding her mother’s eyes.

Penelope sipped her coffee loudly. Milk, no sugar. Of course. “Good choice,” she told her. “We wouldn’t want you to ruin your figure. Have you tried the tea? I thought we should try something new, so I picked out some wild berry flavoured.”

Cheryl grit her teeth. Her mouth tasted like ash. “I’m sure it’s excellent,” she said. “Which pot is it?”

Penelope extended her hand to pour some tea for Cheryl. She looked impressive, even as early as eight in the morning – her hair was pulled up into a careful hair-do, and she’d somehow found the time to do her make-up already. Not a single lash was out of place.

She eyed Cheryl critically, and tsked. “I wish you’d take better care of yourself,” she said.

Cheryl took her cup of tea, and sipped it. It burned down her throat; she took another sip. Her stomach was curling in on itself – an everyday occurrence in the Blossom breakfast table by now. “Of course,” she said. She’d washed her hair this morning; it fell in flat curls down her back. “I know how important appearances are to you.”

“It’s not that,” Penelope said. “I just worry for you.”

 _I’m sure_ , Cheryl thought. She ate her omelette and drank her tea, which was bitter and diluted at the same time, before making her escape to her room. She passed by her father on the way, his eyes keyed to the television screen, but didn’t stop to say hello. They hadn’t talked for days, anyway.

Cheryl pressed the door to her room shut, and felt her shoulders slump. She bit her lower lip, not enough to draw blood because it ruined her lips and they needed to be fine, everything about her needed to fine and good and better than that, most of the time.

 She started her daily routine: picking and colour coordinating an outfit, doing her make-up in accordance with it, blow drying her hair to the best condition possible. Cheryl stared at herself through the reflection of her mirror as she puffed her hair up, added hair spray, puffed it again. She hadn’t looked this good in a while. Something about it brought her a sense of odd satisfaction; _I look better than mother does._

Cheryl was staring at her collection of shoes when the usual pang of desperation hit her chest. _Red, or yellow?_ She had to get out of this house. _Red went better with the shirt._ Only a few months at most, and she’d have worked enough to be able to afford to rent an apartment somewhere. _Yellow went better with the skirt_.

“What a lovely blouse,” Penelope said as Cheryl passed by the kitchen on her way out. “Although, it clashes with the shoes.”

Cheryl shot a glance at her yellow heels, and smiled, her face concealed by her hair. “Oh, a shame. I’ll pick a better pair tomorrow.”

“Mmh,” was all Penelope said in reply, and Cheryl was out the door and on her way to the college building.

 

The school counsellor had told her that grief was normal. He’d told her a lot of things, which Cheryl thought most definitely weren’t normal, were so. Because of this one study, he’d said. He proved a lot of things through studies.

It had been mandatory for her to go there, in the first few weeks after what happened. After Jason died. She’d resented it, because of course, she didn’t need therapy – she needed for Jason to be alive. And when she realized that he couldn’t be, that he was gone, _really_ gone, well. After that therapy had been for weak people, and she wasn’t weak, of course she wasn’t, she only cried once every other day now, and she didn’t even break things, look, she was coping so well, wasn’t she?

But therapy had continued. Slowly, like a river turning its flow around, Cheryl stopped resenting it. She began to cherish the hour she got to spend away from everything else, cooped up in this spacious but cluttered office. The clutter made her feel safe, in some strange way. All the paperweights and plaques and bullet boards with pamphlets that asked things like, No One To Talk To? Feeling Alone? Have You Ever Considered Calling A Crisis Line?

Cheryl had, once. In the end, she hadn’t called. It hadn’t even been a crisis, not really, not in the grand scheme of things. She’d managed. She always did.

Therapy had been fine. Then the entire Blossom family decided, collectively, to move on. Penelope told Cheryl she could stop going. It was framed more in a way that implied she should, because the Blossoms were alright now, they weren’t stuck in the past anymore, and everything was good again.

It was like they forgot that Jason had ever existed. There was a period of time where Cheryl had felt like maybe she’d imagined him, that maybe she’d never had a brother, after all, and she was just insane. But there were pictures of him in her room. Nowhere else in the house, only in her room. So, he had to have been real.

“How’ve you been?” Tom asked, glancing at Cheryl over his dark rimmed glasses. He brushed some crumbs away from his notebook, leaned back in his comfy chair, and uncapped a pen. “Any incidents in the house?”

Cheryl blinked, and forced herself back into this moment, here, now. She stared at her painted red nails. One corner was chipped off, on her right hand’s ring finger. She frowned, lifting her eyes to look at Tom. “Criticism and passiveness,” she summarized. “The usual.”

“Ah,” Tom said. He liked small acknowledgements like that. _Ah. Oh. I see_. “Nothing like after his death?” He also liked to avoid saying Jason’s name aloud. Cheryl had yet to figure out why it was.

“Not yet,” she said. “Of course, it’ll change when she realizes I’m leaving. Her perfect daughter. Can you imagine?”

“Mmh,” Tom said. He wrote something down. “She’ll be upset. Are you ready to handle that? I can be there, if you want to. When you tell her.”

Penelope had to know, of course. Cheryl just didn’t want her to. She wanted to simply leave and have them treat her like Jason, to forget that the existed and erase herself from their memories. Like she was nothing.

“I don’t know,” she said. “She doesn’t trust you, I don’t think it’ll help much for you to be there.”

Cheryl didn’t want to be alone, truth be told. But having her therapist, whom she wasn’t meant to be seeing, be there? It was bound to make everything worse.

Tom nodded. “I understand. Do you know when you’ll be leaving?”

Cheryl shrugged. “Next month. I’ll have saved enough money by then. I hope. Unless I quit before that. I’m sharing all my shifts with this… this _witch_ of a woman.”

This piqued Tom’s interest; he looked up sharply. “Who? No, actually – what makes you say that?”

“That she’s a witch?” Cheryl sighed. “Well, besides the fact that she’s probably actually some weird pagan – I mean, look at her, she wears leather and has pink hair – I mean, who has pink hair in twenty-goddamn-eighteen? Aside from that, she’s insufferable. She thinks she’s so clever. Like, fine, maybe she’s scoring perfect A’s and still managing her job and stuff, but that doesn’t make her special.”

“Does she say she’s special?” Tom asked. “Or do you only think so?”

“I don’t think she’s—” Cheryl stopped, and frowned. “She’s not special, okay? I don’t think she’s anything except annoying.”

“Okay, then.” Tom looked amused. “What’s her name?”

“Toni,” Cheryl said, bemused. “Toni freaking Topaz. A jewel. Yeah, right.”

Tom made a note of something, smiling to himself. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Well, then. Is there something in particular you’d want to talk about today?”

 

The café smelled of croissants, and fresh bread. Cheryl took a deep breath as she walked in, and closed her eyes, just for a moment. This was what home should feel like, she thought vaguely. This, and not what it felt like now, exhaustion and dread and all sorts of things that she didn’t want.

Cheryl put her apron on and pulled her hair into a bun, relishing the fact that there was no one to critique her for its sloppiness.

Toni looked at her when she walked in. She was in the middle of making something, and glanced meaningfully at the clock and then at her. “Wow,” she said, turning back to the coffee. “You’re only fifteen minutes late.”

Cheryl pushed past her and towards the pastry section. “Yeah, _so_ sorry that my…” She paused. “That I had something more important.”

“Something more important than selling buns?” Toni asked. She finished the coffee and turned around, smiling at the customer. “I find that hard to believe—here you go, one large cappuccino to go.”

“Frankly, it’s none of your business,” Cheryl said. She put the vanilla croissants into the oven and set the timer. “I have a life outside of work and school, unlike some people.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard.” Toni leaned her back against the counter; the café was empty for now.

“What do you mean?” Cheryl asked sharply. “What have you heard?”

Toni eyed her, smiling. “Just things. People talk a lot, you know. About things happening around Riverdale, yeah, but _you_ especially are a big gossip mill all by yourself. Yesterday, I heard that you and your brother were in love. The day before that, I heard that you killed him. Today, I’m sure they’ll have found another thing to talk about when it comes to the Blossoms.”

No matter how hard she tried not to let Toni’s words affect her, Cheryl felt a pang in her chest at the mention of Jason. She knew about the rumours, everyone did. She just thought it might’ve calmed down during the year he’d been dead.

Wishes were worth nothing, it seemed.

“Does no one in this cursed town have an ounce of respect for the dead?” She asked, willing her voice not to tremble. “Jason was my brother. I miss him, every single day, and you people—” She cut herself off as the café door opened, and turned away towards the oven, but not before missing the look on Toni’s face. Guilt. And a little bit of sadness.

But not pity. That surprised Cheryl. She was used to pity, and hatred, and even despise.

No pity. Interesting.

“One latte,” Cheryl heard over her shoulder.

“Coming right up,” Toni said, and then appeared next to Cheryl. She didn’t look at her as she worked the coffee machine. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Cheryl asked. “I don’t need your apologies, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, well.” Toni yanked a lever. “I’m still sorry, alright? Just accept it, for god’s sake.”

“Maybe I don’t want to,” Cheryl argued. “Maybe you should stop being so pushy—”

“Just,” Toni cut in, lifting a hand to silence Cheryl, who tried not to flinch. “Just shut up, okay? I know you think you’re some kind of invincible monster, but I know you’re not. You can’t be. So, shut up. I’m sorry. About your brother, and about the rumours, all of it. Okay? I’m sorry.”

Cheryl stared at the corner between the kitchen counter and the wall. It was dirty, she should clean it, she needed a rag, she had to…

Cheryl sighed, swallowing nothing. It had been a long time since someone had apologized to her about anything.

“It’s fine,” she said quietly. “You don’t need to apologize. You didn’t do anything.”

Toni put a lid on the coffee. Her nails were black today, immaculate and shiny. There were white star stickers on them. Old scars covered the backs of her hands, scratches and some deeper cuts. “So, we’re good?”

Cheryl nodded stiffly. “We’re good.”

“Okay, then.” Toni’s face morphed into a smile, and she turned on her heels. “One latte, here you go.”

 

That night, Cheryl stared at her ceiling in the dark. She knew that the minutes were dragging along, from one to two to three in the morning, and there was nothing she could do about it. It was like this on most nights, meaningless existence, feeling useless.

Cheryl wondered about the scars on Toni’s hands. Where’d they come from? From who? She wondered about her past, the gang business people talked about. Had she really been in one? What was it like?

She could ask, she supposed. She should. Probably.

Cheryl turned around in bed, curled in on herself. She wouldn’t ask. She didn’t care that much, anyway.

 

*

 

Days passed. Cheryl stopped pretending she didn’t care. She was curious about Toni – her past, why she’d come to Riverdale, why she’d stayed. Why was her hair pink? Why not brown, or blue, or red. Why pink. Why the leather jackets. Why the unwavering empathy she seemed to radiate? Where did it come from, and how, and why—

“Hand me the tea over there?” Toni asked, extending her hand towards Cheryl.

Cheryl obliged. The hot liquid burned a little through the Styrofoam cup, and the sensation lingered after Cheryl let go of it. She glanced at her fingertips. It was a different kind of burning than what she got from drinking scolding hot tea. Cheryl’s mind flashed back to a year ago, to her filling their most expensive tea cups with boiling water and throwing them against the walls. A lot of it had spilled on her hands.

At least she wasn’t breaking anything, anymore. Not even herself. Not for a while now.

Toni snapped her fingers near her head, and Cheryl looked up, already frowning. Toni was looking at her with something like worry, which made something defensive spike up in Cheryl. “What?”

“You’ve got a line,” Toni pointed out, nodding behind Cheryl.

Cheryl turned to look behind her. Two people were queueing up behind her side of the counter, the other one looking impatient. She was tapping her foot against the floor, hands on her hips.

“Thanks,” she said absently, without turning back to Toni.

Cheryl didn’t know what to make of Toni. She’d expected their first few days to be absolute chaos and hell, but instead, they worked together remarkably well. Or, at least, there hadn’t been any screaming matches or accidents, which Cheryl took to mean that they were a functional team.

It was weird. Cheryl wasn’t sure whether she liked it or not. Whether she liked Toni or not.

Although, she knew already in the back of her mind that her views had shifted. It was only Wednesday, and already Cheryl looked at Toni and didn’t feel the familiar surge of annoyance. She was even alright with the pink hair, if she really thought about it. It wasn’t that tacky on Toni. It kind of fit, really. Most things about Toni seemed to fit.

Cheryl shook her head, and got to work. She had better things to do than think about Toni goddamn Topaz.

 

 

Cheryl checked her bank balance on daily basis, almost obsessively. She was worried – irrationally, she knew – she was worried that somehow it would all disappear overnight. That somehow her mother would find a way to take it all away. She had a knack for ruining all good things in her life.

Cheryl had thought, when she’d been younger, that her mother was a witch. A real witch, not those you saw on TV but the kind who cursed people and lived to make others suffer. The ones who had their comeuppance in the end, except, of course, Penelope never got hers.

Jason had laughed about it, of course, because Jason laughed about everything. He’d been very full of life, always. He’d pulled her closer, a hand over her shoulder, and laughed with his head thrown back so loud that the sound filled every corner of the house. She’d always pouted and smacked her hand against his ribs, which had only served to make him laugh more.

That was how they’d been. Dependent on each other to get through life.

Cheryl felt tears sting her eyes and blinked them away before they could manifest. She was sitting on her bed, a photo album in her lap. It was old, though precisely how old she wasn’t sure. Penelope had never been very good at being a mother, so none of the albums had dates, nor were there many of them. No home videos, no saved craft projects or childhood drawings.

Cheryl didn’t mind. The less she had to be reminded of the days when there’d been her and Jason the better. It was a bleak contrast to this day, with just her left, incomplete and aching.

Her fingers traced the edges of a picture of the two of them. It was summer, probably turning into fall. They were standing in front a lake, hands clasped together, both grinning widely. If Cheryl had to guess, she’d say they were about eight or nine. Still kind of happy. Still kind of carefree.

The picture was worn at the edges. Cheryl took it out of the album and pressed the book shut, hid it under her bed along with the rest of them. She put the picture between the pages of her notebook, the one she carried with her on the daily. It fit perfectly.

There was a knock on her door, and Cheryl dropped the notebook into her bag like it burned.

“Yes?” She called out.

The door creaked open. For a split second, Cheryl thought that Jason might walk in, looking like he had the night she’d last seen him. _I’m not dead after all_ , he’d say. _False alarm_.

But it was her father instead. Cliff looked awkward, standing by her door, one foot in and one foot out like he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to come in or not. He waved his hands around, then stuck them in his pockets.

“Dad,” Cheryl said, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

Cliff glanced around her room, avoiding looking at her. “Your mother wanted me to say,” he started, then stopped. “Your mother asked me to tell you that we’re going away for the weekend. Would you want to… invite a friend over, or something?”

What he wanted to ask was, _can you handle being alone in the house or will we have to call an ambulance again?_

It had been one time, a month or so after Jason, maybe a little earlier, or a little later, Cheryl couldn’t be certain. Penelope and Cliff had gone out for the night, some fancy dinner because they had to keep up appearances and be fine.

Something had snapped. Cheryl hadn’t been able to rationalize it to herself later. Something inside her had just broke, and the next thing she knew, she was being carried into the ambulance by someone, bleeding out. She remembered the bright lights, and her mother’s disappointed face. The next memory she had was of her waking up in the hospital the next day, and being told she was being put on suicide watch.

“It’s really not necessary,” her mother had said. “If she’s dumb enough to kill herself, she might as well go ahead with it.”

Cheryl had stayed alive afterwards out of spite, and then slowly because she wanted to.

She thought about Toni. She thought about Veronica from school. She thought about the lack of contacts on her phone. “I’ll be fine on my own,” Cheryl said. “Don’t worry.”

Cliff smiled a tight-lipped and awkward smile. “Okay, then,” he said. “Good.”

And that was that.

 

*

 

It was Sunday that found Cheryl staring at the walls, wanting to scratch them. She wouldn’t, because Penelope would know, and Cheryl didn’t like it when her mother knew anything about how she was doing. She’d only find something to criticize her about. _Not even the new tapestry? I thought you’d go for the most damage you can inflict, it’s what you’ve always done_.

Cheryl was in the living room, waiting for her tea to cool down. She was lying on her back on the couch, eyes wandering from the walls to the ceiling and back to the walls again. There was an itch underneath her skin, in the tips of her fingers, that urged her to do something, anything.

This too, Tom had said, was normal.

“You’ll feel angry,” he’d told her. “It’s normal, and it’s alright. We’ll just find a good outlet for you to let it out.”

It’d been a few months after Jason. Maybe three. Cheryl remembered that it had been raining, because the tipper-tapper of the downpour had distracted her from listening to Tom. Not that she’d particularly wanted to, anyway.

“I’m not angry,” Cheryl had said. “I’m just… tired.”

Tom had smiled good naturedly, in a way that told her he didn’t believe her at all. “Okay,” he’d said. “That’s normal, too—”

“Yeah, everything’s so normal and fine and alright,” Cheryl had snapped. “Except nothing is, because Jason’s dead, and my mom’s trying to smoke me out of the house, and my dad’s not doing a damn thing about it because he’s always been as passive as a cloud on a windless day. Nothing is fine, or normal, and certainly not me.”

Tom had regarded her silently for a while. “That feeling?” He said, nodding slowly. “That’s what we’ll start to work on.”

It took two more months for her to stop throwing tea cups around. She stopped ripping apart old family photos, and burning albums, and digging into her own skin when the hurt overwhelmed her in its embrace.

Cheryl sat up and sipped her tea. It’d be exactly a year since his death next week. They’d probably visit the grave, but she wouldn’t be allowed to talk or cry or touch the brimstone, which was fine, because Cheryl could to all those things when she went there alone.

Visiting Jason was strange. Sometimes, it calmed her down. Gave her a sense of peace. Sometimes, though, it made her so indescribably angry that she wanted to rip the stone from the ground with her bare hands and crush it into pieces, stomp on it, scream.

She never did. When it was like that, she just sat down on the grass or snow or dead leaves, wrapped her arms around her legs and dug her nails into her knees for a while. It helped, sometimes. Sometimes, it didn’t.

Cheryl downed the rest of the tea. At least she’d have something to talk about in therapy.

Her parents came back home that evening. Cliff asked her how she’d been. Penelope glared at her and went straight into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Cheryl looked at the door, then back at her father. “How was your weekend?”

Cliff gave her a tired look. “Great,” he said. “Just great.”

He disappeared into his own bedroom as well, leaving Cheryl alone to wonder when her parents had started hating each other, exactly.

 

Cheryl had morning classes on Monday, which meant, blessedly, that she didn’t have the time to attend breakfast with her mother. Instead, she took her lunch with her and disappeared out the door before Penelope was even awake.

The air felt crisp and clear. Spring was well on its way into summer already. This summer, Cheryl decided, would be a good one. She’d move out of the house, do things she wanted to do, hang with people she wanted to hang out with.

Not that the list was long. Cheryl knew people, but she didn’t _know_ people. She was friendly with a number of people from Riverdale College, but none she could call her true friends. No one she could rely on.

Tom had told her she needed to let people in. That she’d closed herself off after Jason’s death. Cheryl supposed he was kind of right, but she wouldn’t admit it to his face.

Letting people in sounded well and good in theory, but in practice, Cheryl didn’t quite know how to do that. She’d never had a lot of friends, or people she trusted. Except Jason. Jason was the exception to most things.

She reached the college building and made her way into the lecture hall, picking a seat from the backrow. She used to sit at the front, but then being seen by people became difficult. She couldn’t stop hearing everyone whispering around her, pointing fingers, drawing conclusions. So, she sat in the backrow. It was fine.

Cheryl had just managed to pull out her laptop when the sound of the door being opened drew her attention. She turned to look; Toni was standing by the doorway, glancing around the mostly empty hall.

Their eyes met. Cheryl looked away before she could do something stupid, like smile, or wave at her. A few seconds later, she could feel someone sitting down next to her.

“You dropped this,” Toni’s voice said.

Cheryl turned to look. Toni was holding the picture of her and Jason as kids in her hand. She looked at the photograph, her eyes flickering across it. Cheryl wasn’t sure what to make of her expression; something between fondness and sorrow. It was a familiar look.

“Thank you,” Cheryl said, snatching the picture back. “It must’ve fallen from by bag by accident.”

“Yeah, no problem.” Toni’s eyes lingered on her for a while, before she tore them away. She pulled her own laptop out, and began to type something out. Her screen was dimmed down, making it impossible to see what was on it.

They sat together in class now. Cheryl bit her lip.

They’d been on this same course for half a year now, and they’d never sat even remotely close to each other. At first, Cheryl hadn’t been aware of Toni’s existence, and afterwards, she’d wished she hadn’t been. Toni was an ex-gang member. Toni was bad news. Toni was everybody’s sweetheart, and Cheryl was… well. Cheryl was a broken shell of her former self.

“You looked happy,” Toni said suddenly. She glanced at Cheryl. “In that picture, you looked happy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like that.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Cheryl said, pointedly looking at her laptop. “Things change. I’ve changed.”

“Because of Jason.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” Cheryl said in a needless confirmation. “Because of Jason.” Lately, everything was because of Jason.

There was a pause. “What actually happened?” Toni asked eventually, her voice quiet. “I’ve heard a billion stories of it, but I’ve never heard the truth. I’d like to.”

Cheryl scoffed. “What, so that you can make your own stories up? Sell the truth to some high school kid for ten bucks?”

Toni almost rolled her eyes. “I don’t know where you got the impression from that I’m an awful person, but it’s not true. I’m just curious, alright? I don’t want to sell your story to anyone. I just want to, I don’t know. Understand you.”

Cheryl stopped typing in the middle of a sentence, her fingers hovering over her keyboard. “Understand me?” She echoed, leaning back in her chair. “Why would you want that?”

Toni shrugged. “You interest me, that’s all. I don’t see a reason for us to be at each other’s throats. Do you?”

To her shock, Cheryl didn’t. Toni wasn’t, when it came down to it, anything that Cheryl had imagined. She wondered if their boss had planned it, somehow, if she’d known they’d get along if they just tried. Cheryl wanted to try. That was new.

“No,” she said aloud. “I guess I don’t.” She paused, considering her words. “Jason was shot. Robbery gone wrong in the next town over. He was—he was buying bus tickets, you know, for the two of us. To get out of Riverdale. I guess he got the tickets before the robbery, or something else happened, because the money we’d saved was gone and he was dead and the tickets were nowhere. So, that’s what happened.”

“And is the reason you wanted to get out of Riverdale the same reason why you’re in class forty minutes before it starts?” Toni asked gently.

Cheryl shrugged. “Might be.”

Toni extended her hand hesitantly, and laid it on Cheryl’s arm. She gave it a gentle squeeze. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” she said. “Take your time.”

 _Take your time._ Cheryl hadn’t heard that in a while. _Take your time_. Toni’s hand felt warm against her skin.

“Thank you,” Cheryl managed. “You, too.”

Toni smiled at her, her lip gloss shining.

 

*

 

“Slow day,” Toni commented. She was sitting on the main countertop, her feet propped up on the counter opposite to her, blocking the way to the back room. She was wearing socks only; her ankle boots lay on the ground beneath her legs, lazily knocked against each other.

Her socks were black, with pink hearts on them. Cheryl smiled. “Yeah, slow day,” she agreed. “You’d think Thursday morning, people would be queueing up.”

“Maybe they don’t have classes,” Toni suggested. “I mean, we don’t.” She sighed, leaning her head back. “Kinda nice, though.”

Cheryl tore her eyes away from Toni’s jawline, and turned to make herself an ice tea. “Getting paid for not doing any work? I hate to admit it but you’re right.”

“What do you mean, you hate to admit it?” Toni asked, laughing. “Come on, Cher. Make me one too?”

Cheryl turned back to look at her, shielding her eyes from the harsh sunlight filtering through the windows. “An ice tea? Lemon or peach?”

“Lemon.”

“I can’t believe I tolerate you.”

Toni laughed again, and the sound echoed around the empty café. Cheryl’s chest felt warm; she’d made that happen. She’d made someone laugh, she’d made _Toni_ laugh. “Tolerate me?” Toni sounded amused. “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, sugar.”

Cheryl choked on the ice tea she’d been sipping. She coughed as she finished Toni’s lemon version, and handed it over to her. “Sugar?”

Toni shrugged, looking nonchalant. She did that a lot, Cheryl had noticed. She was genuine and caring and warm, but she did it with a nonchalance Cheryl had never quite mastered herself. “I like nicknames,” she explained. “I can stop if it bothers you.”

“No,” Cheryl hurried to say, before she caught herself. “I mean, no, it’s fine, whatever. You can keep your stupid nicknames.”

“Thanks, petal.”

“Petal?”

“You know,” Toni said. “Because you’re a Blossom.”

Cheryl smiled down into her drink. No one called her _petal_. No one called her anything nice, really. And why did Toni have to be so endearing, without even trying? Was it some kind of a natural born talent?

“Right,” she said aloud. “Clever.”

“I am,” Toni agreed jokingly.

“You are,” Cheryl said. “Really, you are. You know that, right?”

Toni looked at her, taken aback. She looked like she might say something, but then stopped herself. “Thanks,” she settled on, eventually. “I appreciate that. You’re… that’s nice of you, to say.”

Cheryl didn’t blush, because Cheryl Blossom didn’t do things like that. But she did sheepishly sip her tea, and turn her head away. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just stating the obvious.”

Toni said nothing, but when Cheryl glanced over at her, she was smiling to herself.

 

Cheryl got home that day earlier than she usually did. Her parents were both in the living room, which came to her as a surprise. Cliff was watching the TV, the explosions of an action film reflecting from his eyes. Next to him, Penelope was reading a book, looking dismayed.

They both looked up as Cheryl stepped in, keys still in her hands. “Hey,” she said. “What’s… has something happened?”

Cliff frowned, tilting his head. “No, nothing’s happened,” he said, sounding confused. “Why would you think that?”

 _Because I haven’t seen the two of you in the same room in weeks_ , Cheryl thought to herself. _Because you’ve been on the brink of a divorce for years, now_.

“No reason,” she said, back pedalling from the situation. “What are you watching?”

Cliff turned his eyes back to the television screen. “Die Hard,” he told her. “A classic, you know.”

“Cheryl can’t watch that,” Penelope remarked. “She might get influences from all that death and martyrdom.”

“Penelope,” Cliff murmured, but not with any real force.

“I’ll be upstairs,” Cheryl announced, willing her voice to sound normal. She climbed the stairs up two at a time, until she reached her room. In a rare moment of indulgence, she slammed her door shut, hoping the sound would carry over to downstairs.

Cheryl slid down to the floor, her back against the door, and let herself cry. It seemed this was a day for letting herself do things she normally wouldn’t. Like compliment Toni. Like slam a door. Like cry and scratch at her skin until it was red with irritation.

She remained there, leaning against the door, for hours. Night fell; she saw the moon climb up through her window, where the curtains were permanently pulled aside. Cheryl could hear her parents having dinner downstairs at some point, but they didn’t come up to ask her to join them. She wouldn’t have gone, regardless.

Cheryl pulled her phone out and checked her bank balance once more, finding comfort in the numbers that had yet to disappear. They meant freedom. They meant eventually getting out of this house and its people, its memories and scars.

She leaned her forehead against her knees, closing her eyes.

Less than a month, and she’d leave.

She could do it.

 

*

 

Tom handed her two leaflets over the desk. He was wearing a light blue vest over a white polo shirt, because he was an old man who’s sense of fashion was sometimes truly abhorrent. Cheryl could hear his wrist watch ticking as she took the leaflets from him and leaned back against her chair, eyeing them.

 _How To Come Out Safely – Ten Tips To Prevent The Situation From Escalating_ and _Moving Out In A Turbulent Environment – What To Keep In Mind_.

Cheryl looked up at Tom, one brow raised. “Really?” She asked. “These are going to help me?”

Tom shrugged. “Give them a read,” he suggested. “You never know what might come in handy.”

“These ten tips can’t be good enough to prevent my mother going ballistic over the fact that her only remaining child, whom she already considers a disappointment, is gay,” Cheryl reminded him, waving the leaflets in her hand for emphasis. “I appreciate the gesture, but this is worth jack.”

Tom gave a beleaguered sigh. “I know it’s a difficult situation,” he said. “But there’s no harm in reading those, really.”

Cheryl deflated. She scanned through one of the leaflets. “Make sure the other person knows that it is nobody’s fault that you are queer,” she quoted. “There can be a lot of unnecessary blame game in these situations—yeah, but my mother doesn’t care. She’ll blame me for it, for being born _unnatural_.”

“So, we’ll cherry pick the best advice and work out a way to make it beneficial for you,” Tom said. “We don’t have to do this book-by-book. There’s no set of guidelines you have to follow.”

“Yeah,” Cheryl said. She felt small and defeated, looking at these leaflets. They wouldn’t help her; nothing could. Maybe she should just leave in the dead of the night and never come back, never explain herself. “Thanks for these, I’ll… keep them in mind.”

Tom nodded, flipping through his notebook. “Good, that’s good. I really think we can work something out. You just have to remember that you’re not alone in this, I can always be there with you when you do tell her. But only if you want to.” He paused. “So, how’s work been? You mentioned your co-worker was giving you trouble some time ago.”

Cheryl couldn’t help the smile that bloomed on her face. She stared at Tom’s desk, avoiding his eyes. “She’s not all too bad,” she said. “I mean, we—she’s really sweet. I like talking to her. I haven’t really… had friends, before, so. It’s nice.”

“So, not a weird pagan girl, then?” Tom asked, amused.

Cheryl huffed. “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe. But even if she is, it’s fine.” She paused, hesitant. “I told her about Jason. What really happened.”

Tom looked visibly shocked; he leaned back in his chair, head tilted at a considering angle. “You did?”

“I did,” Cheryl confirmed. “It was just—she asked, you know. She was the first person aside from you who asked what happened, and didn’t assume. She said that I’m interesting. Or that I interest her, or whatever. It doesn’t matter. But I told her.”

“Huh,” Tom exclaimed. “Well, that’s certainly progress, Cheryl.” She didn’t like it when he used her name. She’d never told him that, she realized. “Is the fact that she asked the only reason you told her, do you think? Or do you think there was something else to it, too?”

Cheryl frowned. “Like what?”

Tom wrote something down, before looking up at her, smiling. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Just an old man overthinking things. What about your mother? How have things been around the house?”

“She thinks I’d be better off dead,” Cheryl said, and if she sounded bitter, well. She thought she had the right to it. “As per usual. She keeps making snide remarks about last year. About the episode.” Cheryl didn’t like to refer to it by anything other than that. An episode. An isolated incident. “I guess she thinks I should’ve just died.”

The office fell silent for a while. Tom eyed his notes, tapping his pen against the notebook. He was big on thinking things over before he said them, which was something Cheryl appreciated. He didn’t blurt out nonsense. Most of the time.

“I think – and I want you to think about this, Cheryl – I think I’d like to know something. Do you think that your relationship with your mother is irredeemable?”

Chery’s first instinct was, _yes_. Of course, it was. They’d been broken long before everything with Jason had happened. Penelope had never been fit to be a mother, and Cheryl knew – or, strongly assumed – that the only reason she even had children was to keep up appearances.

They’d always been bad for each other, that much was obvious. Jason had worked as some kind of a buffer between them, before, and now that he was gone they’d had to face each other head on. Things were worse than ever; Penelope said exactly what she thought, while Cheryl said none of it.

They didn’t work. Nothing in their household worked anymore, and maybe hadn’t for a long, long time.

“I don’t think there’s anything she can do to fix what she’s said and done in the best,” Cheryl said. “And I don’t think she’d even want to try.”

“And do you?” Tom asked. “Want to try.”

Cheryl stared at the pile of papers on the desk. The stack wasn’t in order. “No,” she decided. “I don’t want to try. I want to get away from her and forget that she ever existed, that any of it did.”

“What about your father?”

“My father is a flat piece of bread who can’t even muster up the courage to get a divorce,” Cheryl said. “If he wants to stay in touch with me, he can do that. But I want to see him make an effort. He hasn’t done that in years.”

Tom nodded thoughtfully. “Alright, then,” he said, and fixed his glasses. “I think that what we need to do, then, is make a plan.”

 

This time, as Cheryl strolled in ten minutes late with a scowl on her face, Toni didn’t mock her. She stopped in the middle of sipping her coffee and eyed Cheryl, worried.

Cheryl walked past her, then stopped abruptly. She turned around on her heels, briefly registering that the café was empty around them. “Therapy,” Cheryl announced flatly. “I had therapy, that’s why I’m late, and that’s why I was late last week. It was mandatory, and then it wasn’t. I still go. If you want to call me crazy, now would be the time, because if I’m not now I certainly will be soon, because—” She took a deep breath, and swallowed air. “Because we just spent half an hour thinking of a plan on how I’ll tell my mother, who’d rather I’d have succeeded in killing myself last year, that I’m gay and moving out and never want to see her again. Half an hour, and we still didn’t figure anything out because there’s nothing to do, and—”

She found it difficult to breathe. Her chest was tight and she felt dizzy, and the café was sort of spinning around her.

Toni took a step closer, and placed her hands firmly on Cheryl’s shoulders, rooting her in place. She tried to catch her eyes. “Look at me,” she said, in a commanding yet soft tone. “Cheryl, come on, look at me, look at—there we go. It’s fine. Okay? It’s fine, everything’s fine, just breathe – yeah, breathe, in and out, take your time. Take your time. Breathe. Cheryl, it’s _alright_.”

Cheryl blinked at the spots in her vision before she decided to simply close her eyes, and then everything was dark. She breathed in tandem with Toni, who squeezed her shoulders every time she had to inhale and exhale.

Slowly, her breathing relaxed. Cheryl opened her eyes to Toni’s relieved face.

“Sorry,” she managed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Toni said, smiling hesitantly. “My mom used to get those. It’s fine. You okay?”

Cheryl nodded. Her knees felt weak. “Alright,” she said. “Feeble.”

“Okay, let’s…” Toni moved her hands to Cheryl’s waist. Before she could say anything, Toni was lifting her to sit on the counter. Cheryl’s heart did an odd jump in her chest, and the took a dive as Toni’s hands left her waist. Toni rubbed her hands against each other absently, looking to her right with glassy eyes. “Okay,” she said slowly. She blinked and shook her head. “Okay, we’ll say we took a break and close for a while. I’ll make you tea. We’ll talk. That sound good?”

“Yeah,” Cheryl breathed out. She could still feel Toni’s fingers against her skin. “Yeah, sure.”

Toni put the main lights out and flipped the sign by the door from OPEN to CLOSED. She made Cheryl a cup of vanilla tea, with sugar, and herself a latte, before propping herself up on the counter opposite to Cheryl. She playfully knocked at Cheryl’s ankle with her right foot to get her to look up.

Cheryl did.

Toni smiled. “Okay, now, walk me through all that again, slowly, this time. Let’s start with the therapy. You go to therapy?”

Cheryl shrugged reluctantly. She felt embarrassed; she hadn’t shown this much of herself to anyone in over a year. “Yeah. They wanted me to, after Jason’s death. Grief counselling, or something like that. Then I kind of got used to it. It’s… nice. My therapist is nice.”

Toni sipped her coffee. “Right. Well, first of all, I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’ve been through a lot, and it’s taken a toll on you. That’s to be expected, right? It’s alright.”

Cheryl looked up slowly, meeting Toni’s eyes. “You think so?”

“Yeah.” Toni shrugged a little. “We’ve all got issues. I think therapy’s a really good idea.”

“It is,” Cheryl agreed. She bit her lip, and turned her eyes to look at her tea cup. It was rippling softly. “Well, anyway. I was there today. And before. That’s why I’ve been late. Today, we were supposed to make a plan for me. On how to tell my mother that I’m…” She drifted off.

“How to come out?” Toni prompted.

“Yeah,” Cheryl said. “That. She’s not going to be fine with it. She already hates me, always has. She’s the reason Jason and I wanted to run away. He knew about me; he was the only one who did. I trusted him with everything, so, obviously he knew. But he also knew what our mother’s like. He just wanted to protect me.” Her voice broke a little. “So, yeah, in a way I guess I felt guilty about his death. Still do. And that was difficult for me to come to terms with, after everything.”

Toni set her coffee aside and hopped down from the counter. She crossed the small space to stand in front of Cheryl, and took her hands in hers. “So, you did something stupid?” She asked quietly. She was rubbing small circles into the backs of Cheryl’s hands.

Cheryl nodded slowly. She sniffled, blinking up at the ceiling. “Yeah, you could call it that. I was just so mad at everyone, but mostly myself. I wanted to stop being angry, and sad, and tired. I just wanted it to stop.”

“Yeah,” Toni said softly. “I get it.” Her hands left Cheryl’s, but before she could complain, Toni was hugging her. Her arms reached around her shoulders as she pressed against Cheryl, who closed her eyes and slowly, hesitantly, laid her forehead on Toni’s shoulder and felt, for just a small while, safe.

 

*

 

“Out of state?” Cheryl asked, frowning. “Where? Why?”

Her father squirmed uncomfortably, standing by her door. He seemed to always be uncomfortable, to some extent. Like he didn’t quite know how to be himself. “California,” he explained. “Your mother wants to get away for a while. The anniversary was hard on her, you know.”

Cheryl bet it was. They’d visited Jason’s grave, where her mother had told them how she mourned the loss of her only good child. How difficult it was without him. How he’d had such promise in him, he’d been destined for great things, hadn’t he been?

Cheryl tried not to be bitter. None of this was Jason’s fault, no matter how much her mind tried to sometimes convince her that he’d been selfish to leave her alone here.

“Of course,” Cheryl said. “How long will you be away?”

Cliff shrugged uncertainly. “A few days at most, I should think. From Thursday to Sunday, probably. Will you be fine?”

“I can invite a friend over,” Cheryl said. “Or, I mean, she’s a co-worker.”

Her father brightened up considerably. “Oh, that’s great. Who is she? What’s her name?”

“Toni,” Cheryl told him. “She moved in recently, you wouldn’t know her.” He also wouldn’t know any other people Cheryl could mention from school, because he never went out, or met people. That was all Penelope.

“How nice,” Cliff said, but he sounded like he was a little bit in pain. “I’ll tell your mother—”

“No,” Cheryl rushed to say. At her father’s quirked brow, she added, “I mean, I can tell her myself. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” Cliff said. He smiled tightly. “Good, then.”

She never told Penelope. The less suspicion there was on Cheryl now, the better. She only had to struggle for a few weeks before her pay day, and then she’d be out of here. She couldn’t have her mother kick her out before then.

 

Their doorbell rang that Thursday at precisely six in the evening. Cheryl stood behind the door for a few seconds before answering, composing herself. She inhaled, held it in for ten seconds, then exhaled, and made herself smile.

The smile widened into a genuine grin as Cheryl opened the door to the sight of Toni standing on their front steps. She had a large duffel bag in one hand and a backpack on her shoulders. She was staring up at their house, one judgmental brow raised. “Your house is really fucking pretentious,” she said.

Cheryl laughed. “Yeah, I know it is. It’s embarrassing. My parents just left, you can come in.”

Toni walked in, whistling loudly as she did. “Even more pretentious from the inside,” she remarked.

Cheryl closed the front door behind them, and followed Toni further into the house. “Yeah, mother’s big on décor. I guess she needs something to focus her energy on. She loves to read those interior design magazines and copy her favourite things.”

Toni glimpsed into the living room and kitchen. “Yeah, I can buy that. Jesus, this is a huge house. Please tell me there’s an upstairs?”

Cheryl grinned. “Obviously, there’s an upstairs. Two of them, in fact.”

“Jesus,” Toni repeated. She fixed her backpack on her shoulders, and blew a strand of hair away from her face. “Well, lead the way, then.”

They camped up in Cheryl’s room, on the top floor. Toni mocked everything she had, from her TV to her wardrobe to her carpets, before saying that it was a cool room. Cheryl took it to mean that she didn’t mind staying there for a few days.

Cheryl eyed her bed as the clock neared midnight. The bed was easily large enough for two people, she thought. But. “I can get you a mattress,” Cheryl suggested, looking at Toni.

Toni turned away from where she’d been scanning through Cheryl’s bookshelf. Her hand was frozen halfway through pulling a novel out. She frowned, like Cheryl had said something ridiculous. “Oh, no, come on,” she said. “That bed’s huge. We’ll fit just fine.”

Cheryl’s heart sped up, against her better judgement. “Okay,” she said, willing her dumb emotions to just calm down. It was just a bed. “Yeah, that was kind of what I thought as well.” She paused. “Which book is that?”

Toni pulled the book out the rest of the way and flipped it over to read the back cover. “Fingersmith,” she said, clearly amused. “My, Cheryl, what kind of other novels do you have?”

If Cheryl blushed, well. It was dark enough that there was no way for Toni to notice. “Jason gave that to me for my seventeenth birthday,” she explained. “He thought it was funny. I read it a lot, after… you know. I read a lot of the books he got me. Like they had some kind of answers.”

Toni put the book back into the shelf carefully. “You were just trying to hold on, I guess,” she said. “It’s—”

“Don’t tell me it’s normal,” Cheryl cut in. She couldn’t help but laugh a little. “I’ve heard that a billion times in therapy already.”

Toni smiled at her from across the room. She walked over and sat next to Cheryl on the bed, their arms pressed together. Cheryl took her hand in hers, grazing the scars Toni had.

“Where did you get these?” She asked. She brushed a long white scar, stretching across the back of Toni’s left hand. “Looks like it hurt.”

“That one I got from climbing over a wired fence,” Toni told her. “Cut myself on a spike or something. We were running away from this one guy with my ex, and, you know, we were in a hurry. I wasn’t looking where I was going. It bled like shit, he was so freaked.”

“I bet,” Cheryl said. “Why were you running?”

Toni shrugged reluctantly. “We kind of stole some cash from the guy,” she explained. “He was an abusive asshole, he deserved it. We made a small dent in his life, and it felt good. We spent the money on fries, I think.”

Cheryl chuckled. “A wise investment.” She moved on to another scar, an almost circular one. “And this?”

“Gang stuff,” Toni said, which explained nothing at all.

Cheryl glanced at her. “Gang stuff?”

“It was just a stupid bet,” Toni said. She wasn’t looking at Cheryl. “This one guy said I wouldn’t be able to withstand someone hammering a cork into my hand. I was fifteen, and I was dumb, and I wanted to prove myself. Pretty sure everyone else except me was drunk, so they were all in for it.”

“Did you win?” Cheryl asked. Her stomach felt queasy at the thought of someone hurting Toni.

Toni huffed, and finally, smiled. “Yeah, I did. Fifteen bucks and a beer.”

Cheryl lifted her hand and pressed a gentle kiss on the scars. “I’m sorry about all these,” she said.

Toni shot her a fond look. “It’s not your fault.”

“No,” Cheryl agreed. “But I’m sorry in the same way that you’re sorry about Jason, and the people spreading rumours, and the rest of it.”

“Fair enough.” Toni entwined their fingers. “Thank you.”

Cheryl’s heart was running a marathon. She didn’t think it would stop any time soon.

 

The clock on her bedside table told Cheryl it was a little past two. She stared at the numbers with a dismayed expression. The moon was visible through her window, shining down into her room. Cheryl turned around in bed with a small sigh.

“Can’t sleep, either?” Toni mumbled, her back to Cheryl.

Cheryl startled. “I thought you were asleep.”

Toni rolled over. The moonlight made her eyes seem shiny, bright. Her hair was pooling around her shoulders, the pink still visible in the dark of the room. She had one hand bent under a pillow, her head on top of it, and the other one resting on the bed between them. “I thought _you_ were,” she said back.

“I don’t sleep a lot,” Cheryl shrugged. “Not since Jason.”

“Right,” Toni said. “Makes sense. For me, I just have to get used to a new place. It should be better the next night, already.”

Cheryl bit her tongue from saying something like, _I wish you could get used to sleeping next to me_. Something caught her eyes, a flash of silver. Cheryl looked down and noticed that Toni was wearing a necklace, a crescent moon decorated with purple gemstone pieces embedded into it.

She reached out and turned the crescent around, before letting it drop back on the sheets. “That’s a nice necklace. How come I haven’t seen it before?”

Toni shrugged. “I keep it under my shirt, most of the time. It’s just something I bought for myself after moving to Riverdale. The gem’s garnet. There’s some symbolistic meaning to it, self-worth and—”

“Healing,” Cheryl cut in. At Toni’s curious look, she smiled sheepishly. “I used to collect gemstones.”

“Of course, you did,” Toni laughed. “I can picture tiny Cheryl Blossom, already a force of nature, making small charts of their meanings and values like it’s the most important thing in the world. Do you still have any of those gems?”

“Some, I think. I don’t know where, though.” Cheryl wanted to take Toni’s hand in hers. “I can look for them tomorrow. Or, we can.”

“Mmh, I’d love an excuse to rummage through your room,” Toni mused. “What secrets will I find?”

Cheryl huffed, and smiled. “Not a lot, I don’t think. I don’t keep a lot here, in case my mother ever gets the inclination to search through my room. She can’t kick me out before I have the money to move elsewhere.”

Toni said nothing for a while. Just as Cheryl was about to ask if something was wrong, Toni surged forward in bed, and kissed her.

Cheryl forgot how to breathe. She forgot how to do anything except place her hand on Toni’s waist and kiss her back, like she’d been waiting for this her whole life. She supposed she had been, in a way, had been waiting for someone to lay all her love on to—

They broke off. Cheryl could feel Toni’s breathing on her lips. Their noses were pressed together, and yet every cell in Cheryl’s body screamed at her to get closer, closer, closer.

“Sorry,” Toni breathed out. “I wanted to make it more romantic, but…”

“Shut up,” Cheryl whispered, and kissed her again.

 

*

 

“Oh my god, Veronica, hi,” Toni was saying. Cheryl could hear the smile in her voice.

She turned around, and true enough, Veronica Lodge was standing behind the counter, talking to Toni. She noticed Cheryl in the middle of a sentence and cut herself off, waving at Cheryl with a bright smile.

They’d been friendly before Jason, but definitely not what would constitute as proper friends. Afterwards, they’d exchanged some words and niceties. Veronica had been to the funeral, Cheryl remembered suddenly. She’d been there alone.

“Hey,” Cheryl greeted. She stepped up next to Toni. “Veronica. How are you?”

Veronica smiled. “Oh, alright. Classes are keeping me busy, you now know how it is. Should’ve picked another major, but that’s how a lot of people feel, I think.” She paused, glancing between the two of them. “Toni told me you were sharing shifts. How’s that going, then?”

Cheryl’s face broke into a wide grin entirely without her permission. Her stomach fluttered a little as Toni took her hand behind the counter, entwining their fingers. Toni yanked Cheryl a little closer to her. “Oh, you know,” she said, smiling as brightly as Cheryl. “It’s going.”

“Going?” Veronica quirked a brow. “Looks like. When’s the wedding?”

Toni laughed, and squeezed Cheryl’s fingers. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she said. “Early days.”

“Wait,” Veronica said. She grinned excitedly. “I was kidding, but you’re actually together?”

Cheryl shrugged. “Something like that,” she said. “Like Toni said – early days.”

Veronica whistled. “Damn. That’s a power couple right there, then.” She glanced at the menu above them. “Well, could either of you make me a frappuccino and a croissant to go?”

“We’d love to,” Toni said, and mock bowed. “Your Highness.”

Cheryl laughed, and went to get Veronica her croissant.

She wasn’t used to feeling this happy.

It was nice, she decided. It was very nice.

 

It turned out that it was possible to have two workers of the month – Cheryl and Toni’s pictures were up on the wall next to each other.

“We look damn good,” Toni had said when they’d noticed.

“Damn right we do,” Cheryl had agreed.

They continued to share shifts. Apparently, it was obvious what a good team they made, and had been from the very beginning. Cheryl didn’t protest when their boss said this. The only downside to them sharing shifts that she could think of was them getting distracted and making out in the back room.

Pay day came and went. Cheryl kept checking her bank balance, and kept stalling for time. Everything was ready, except for her.

Toni told her that her plan to slip away in the dark of the night was dumb, if she planned on staying in Riverdale to finish college. Cheryl supposed that was true enough. She needed a clean break, a clear cut off from the rest of the Blossoms. If she simply left, there would be too much left unsaid.

And Cheryl had a lot to say.

Eventually, they decided that it would have to be on a weekend. Saturday, potentially. And Toni would be there with her.

Once they’d made it that far, the only thing there was left to do was to tell Tom and wait for Saturday to arrive.

 

“You ready to do this?” Toni asked. She kept shooting Cheryl worried looks. “We can still change the date.”

Cheryl stood in the middle of her mostly empty room. She’d packed the things she wanted to take with her in boxes and bags, and the two of them had smuggled them into Toni’s car when Cheryl’s parents had been in the city. Everything else was taken care of – the only thing left to do was to tell them that she was leaving.

Cheryl took a deep breath in. “Let’s do this,” she decided. “It’ll only get worse if I wait.”

They walked downstairs together, and into the living room where Cliff and Penelope were. He was watching TV and she was reading a book; neither of them looked like they wanted to be there, next to each other.

Cheryl cleared her throat. Penelope was the first to look up, her face quickly morphing from disinterest to disapproval.

“Cheryl?” She asked. Her eyes had zeroed in on their clasped together hands. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Hi, mother,” Cheryl said. Her stomach felt like a pit of snakes. “Dad. There’s something we need to talk about, and I want to make it clear that I won’t say this twice.” She’d practiced her speech in her mind, but right now, every word of it seemed to quickly slip away. “I’m moving away.”

Her father frowned. The TV was still on. “What do you mean?”

Cheryl swallowed air. “I mean what I said. I’m moving away from this house, with the money that I’ve made.”

“You don’t have enough funds on your account,” Penelope said immediately. “I’ve checked—”

“I opened a new one,” Cheryl cut in. “Because of that exact reason. So, I’m moving away—”

“Do you already have a place?” Cliff asked. “You can’t possibly have. You need to think this through, Cheryl.”

“I’m staying at Toni’s until I find a place of my own,” Cheryl said. She swallowed. “Which leads me to the next thing. We’re dating.”

There was a moment of complete silence, where the only thing Cheryl could hear was the thudding of her heart, and the only thing she could feel was her sweaty hands. She was afraid, for a second, that she might pass out. Then Toni inched closer to her.

“Dating,” Penelope repeated. She put her book down and sat up straight. “Of course.”

Cliff looked at her, shocked. “What do you mean, of course?” He asked. “Do you mean you’re alright with this—”

“No,” Penelope said. Cheryl had expected nothing less. “I only meant, of course you would turn out to be even worse of an abomination that I thought.”

Cheryl surprised herself by not crying. In fact, she felt calm, clear-headed. “I know you think that,” she said. “I know you think it was a mistake that I didn’t die along with Jason, or even better, instead of him. Because he was always the better child, no matter how hard I tried to be what you wanted me to be. Well, it’s funny how that turned out. I guess I’m nothing like what you wanted me to be, and that’s good. I wouldn’t want to be. Because you’re vile and loveless, and anything that you’d think to be good can’t be so. I am good. I am more than good, because I’m nothing like you. I have a girlfriend, and I’m about to walk out of this house with her, and never come back. I hope that it bothers you.”

Penelope stared at her through squinted eyes. “It’s good that you’re leaving,” she said. “I wouldn’t want something like that in my house.”

Cheryl pursed her lips. She turned to look at Cliff. “If you ever want to talk to me, come see me. You can ask around for an address, I’m sure. Make an effort for once in your goddamn life.”

Cheryl and Toni walked out of the house hand in hand. Cheryl resisted the urge to show her middle finger.

She did spit on the front steps.

 

They sped out of Riverdale and towards Toni’s apartment. Cheryl rolled her window open and jut her elbow out, feeling the wind on her skin.

“It’s done,” she said. The weight of it rested comfortably on her shoulders. “It’s really done.”

“It really is,” Toni confirmed. She smiled at her, her eyes crinkled. “Now, let’s go home.”

“Yes,” Cheryl said. She looked out the window, smiling softly. “Let’s.”


End file.
